Sailing around the top mark is the first milestone you encounter and is an opportunity to check on your progress – it tells you where you are in the fleet, just as it’s important to reflect on key milestones in your career and life. How are you tracking? Are you flying along with the wind in your sails? Are you communicating effectively with your crew? Are you at the top of the fleet, considering tactics, or stuck further back, competing for “clean” air? Are you at the tail end of the fleet, wondering how on earth you will catch up?
The Reach section of the race is often the hardest – you’re usually heading towards the next mark, downwind. A gybe is how you change direction when you’re not sailing into the wind. Safety tacks are your alternative; this requires pulling on your sails, going upwind, doing a very slow tack, bearing away, and coming back downwind. This is often a more reliable and safer way of moving around the course when the conditions are challenging. Counterintuitively, sometimes you should go backwards to go forwards.
During the Reach section, you can encounter precarious moments as you factor in all the elements: the speed of the boat, the shift in direction and the power of the wind in the sails. Depending on the weather and your level of competence, gybing can be as easy as shifting sides of the boat, or it can be very challenging, causing you risk of damage to your boat, yourself, and crew. All these skills and manoeuvres require careful consideration of conditions, placement, timing, skill, and communication with everyone involved.
In dinghy sailing, the consequences of a lousy gybe often result in swimming. Not much fun. However, it’s also essential from a resilience perspective when you’re learning to sail, to know that you do have the ability to get your boat back upright and to be able to continue the race.
With time and wisdom, sailors can anticipate “turning turtle” and do their best to minimise the time in the water. For those new to sailing, it’s another skill to develop. You can’t learn the skill without getting wet—much as in life and your career.
Often the things that are the hardest are where we learn the most important lessons. We learn how to anticipate, respond, adapt, and bounce back. The thing about resilience is that you don’t get it from everything going right.
What lessons have you learned in deep water? Have you ever gone back to go forwards?
“The most challenging times bring us the most empowering lessons.”
Karen Salmansohn
